Research Type: Migration & Mobility

Internal migration between places (wards and/or SOAs) in NI has been under researched. In particular, there have been few quantitative analyses. This project aims to address this gap by exploring migration patterns using selected individual, household and ecological variables. The study has two focuses: community background and health status. Particular issues the project seeks to explore include the extent to which individuals living in areas where they are the ‘minority community’ are more likely to move after controlling for selected individual and household characteristics; whether there are differential mobility patterns for people with health problems by the type of area in which they live; and what types of movers are associated with upwards (or downwards) social mobility, as measured by variables such as housing conditions and neighbourhood deprivation.

It is now established that migration can alter the spatial distribution of health within a country, leading to significant alternations in socio-economic gradients through time. However, most studies have examined the effects of internal migration (which forms the majority of the population redistributions); few have examined the effects of immigrants on the spatial distribution of health and less still have studied emigrants. This is expected as it is well recognised that emigration is one of the most difficult facets of demographic change to monitor, and most of the commonly used longitudinal datasets do not reliably record emigration of cohort members.